Bad Astronomy and some drawbacks to personal DNA testing
A few quick things that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while: I’ve added a link to the Bad Astronomy blog by one of my favorite astronomers/debunkers of pseudoscience. Always an enjoyable read, and another example of how to run a good blog. And today’s post mentioned the Amazing Randi, with some links […]
Summertime/end of an internship/moving twice!/grad school…
Wow…yet again it’s been a while since I last wrote anything. It started off because I was busy, and then continued because I was lazy/had time to do non-computer-related things…:) I finished my internship at Science Illustrated and Popular Science magazines back in end-May. It was a really great experience, and I can’t recommend it […]
Virology institute working on curing cancer
More recent freelance work for the Institute of Human Virology (IHV). Interestingly, this time both articles were on cancer! What do viruses have to do with cancer? Well, as Dr. Robert Gallo, Head of the IHV mentioned, it wasn’t long ago that no one thought cancers had infectious causes, but now 20-25% of all cancers […]
Out of Elements
I worked on one of my favorite articles and infographics for the June 2010 issue of Popular Science, on the elements that we couldn’t do without. It brought back memories of high-school and college chemistry, and the infographic itself involves a periodic table. It was interesting to even think of the fact that we do […]
Best Visual Illusion 2010
Check out this visual illusion, winner of this year’s Best Illusion contest. What’s amazing to me is that it’s a real, 3-dimensional object that someone built, not just an animation or picture. The tricks the mind plays are quite fascinating 🙂 See all 10 finalists, as well as brief explanations of each illusion. [Best Illusion […]
Another long hiatus – lots to catch up
Well, it’s been a while since I made time to blog (Should be able to get back to something approaching regularity from today). To get things up to speed, here’s a stunning picture by the Hubble Space Telescope; see below for more links sites celebrating 20 years of Hubble. Been busy, doing some more freelance […]
The Internet for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize?
Internet for Peace The fact that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last year has apparently inspired the largest number of Nobel Peace Prize nominees this year, including…The Internet! From the Internet for Peace website, the Internet is “the biggest social interface ever known to humanity”, and has “laid the foundations for a new kind […]
See Paris from your Desktop
Come see Paris–in 26 gigapixels | The Digital Home – CNET News. Ok, it’s not quite the same as seeing all the sights and sounds of Paris in person, but it’s still pretty fun to see this extremely detailed digital version – in all its 26 Gigapixel glory. The site also allows users to focus […]
Actual NASA Mission Posters are Hilariously Awesome!
NASA Mission Posters Are Hilariously Painful – NASA mission posters – Gizmodo. Unbelievably, these are actual NASA mission posters! It’s nice to know that in between all the dangerous and serious science stuff, they can have some fun too….:) The Gizmodo article above has some more details from one of the people who make them, […]
PopSci and Ars Technica feature parasite I did my PhD on!
Gold Nanoparticles and Lasers Kill the Brain Parasite That Causes “Crazy Cat Lady” Syndrome | Popular Science. I never thought this would happen, but PopSci had an article on Toxoplasma, the fascinating parasite that I spent 6 years studying during my PhD. The article itself is about a fairly futuristic-sounding technique to use gold nanoparticles […]